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Ban Meat And Beef Up Exports !

He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.
An Indiain somnolent slumber after
voting for development in 2014 may wake up to find itself saddled with an
archaic agenda riding astride a society in strife.

For starters, take meat. As if on
cue, state after BJP ruled state has suddenly woken up to the overarching
religious need for keeping meat and fish shops as well as abattoirs closed on Hindu
and Jain festival days. Maharashtra took
the lead followed by Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Haryana and Jammu and
Kashmir. A similar ban had been placed in Karnataka when the BJP held power. No
prizes for guessing where this inspiration/diktat comes from. Obviously, Nagpur.

The Narendra Modi led BJP
government is apparently frittering
away a rock solid mandate for forward looking national governance befitting a
robust, youthful country on archaic, delusional visions of ancient grandeur.

The Fadnavis government in Maharashtra
soon found itself done in when their High Court intervened to restore reason
and reduced it to two days but not before BJP’s partner in power, Shiv Sena as
well as it’s offshoot MNS set up stalls to sell meat in defiance. The ban, ostensibly
because of the Jain festival of Paryushan is a poor and ill-advised attempt at
playing petty politics by placing the gun on their shoulders. The entire
opposition – Shiv Sena, Congress, NCP and MNS-slammed the move. A two day ban
had been in place since 1964. Last year it was increased to four and this time
to eight days, triggering the uproar and now it is back to two. Similarly in
Gujarat slaughter houses in all the key municipal corporation areas of the
state were ordered closed from September 10 to 17 with respective civic bodies
issuing notifications for the same. The ban in J&K only led to public slaughtering
of cows in defiance of the high Court order enforcing the colonial-era Ranbir
penal code which immediately rekindled memories of a similar defiant cow
sacrifice at the lal Chowk in Srinagar
in the mid-eighties. The orders to the Kashmir cops to enforce a 150 year old
rule led to a complete shutdown of the valley and only put the PDP-BJP
government up to ridicule. So ham-handed
has decision making been that in Rajasthan, along with meat even liquor sale was banned. However the
uproar that followed led to the ban on sale of liquor being removed. Which of
the two would be termed as more harmful?

The
well orchestrated move has set alarm bells ringing and it is the
Narendra Modi government which is in the cross-hairs of suspicion. For one, it
is the sheathed agenda, hidden onion peal like, that is cause of worry. The Jains are a mere façade, the gun is targeted
elsewhere. However the polarization process sought to be crystallized will have
a deadly fall-out.

The ethnic ferment being witnessed in
Gujarat today is the poisonous repercussion of a process of communal polarization
that was initiated by the then newly appointed chief minister ,Narendra Modi
post-the 2002 Godhra train carnage and the statewide communal riots that followed it. The
incipient infection spread through the
veins of the state when he embarked on
his statewide Gaurav yatra as a prelude
to the State Assembly polls that followed in 2002.Modi swept the polls on a
polarized majority community support but the fabric of social and cultural
amity sewn together by generations of gandhians and philanthropists was
irretrievably damaged. The process did not stop at communalization but the contagion has now permeated to even Hindu
sub-sects.Post-2002 communities began publicizing their identities and one
could see vehicles and shops sporting
stickers like Patidars, Desai’s (shepherd), Durbars (Rajputs), Parushram (Brahmins)
to flaunt their religious identities. It
was the outward manifestation of a rapidly spreading inner malaise. While Mr
Modi sowed the wind and reaped it too but it is
his successor Anandiben Patel who is
now harvesting the whirlwind with her own community of Patidars in
revolt .Patel MPs, MLAs and ministers
belonging to the BJP are being boycotted and hounded by their own kinsmen and are
forced to flee from villages, towns and even official functions all over
Gujarat. The state function in Gandhinagar on the occasion of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s birthday on September 17 was held under unprecedented security
amidst fears of disruption by the agitating Patidars. Similar fears also hound
his ensuing visit to Silicon Valley.It is payback time and I deign to predict that whatever may be the
outcome of this agitation,it will be
Modi’s own BJP which will pay a very heavy price for it in Gujarat in the next
elections.

Interestingly, for all the crocodile
tears being shed for the bovines of India, the
export of beef has gone up during his rule at the Centre. Mr
Modi had led a frontal assault on the UPA government during his 2014 general
election campaign.”India worships cows
as goddess but under UPA rule it is the second
largest beef exporter in the world.The Congress led government is the
initiator of the Pink revolution. This government gives subsidy for setting up
slaughter houses but not to set up cow farms.If
we come to power we will ban such export ”, he had stated.

Over a year of Modi rule has gone by and there is no ban
on beef export anywhere on the horizon. The
Prime Minister does not utter a single
word on the subject. His minister’s obfuscate the issue, stating that the
matter is best left to the states.

On the contrary, in a classic case of
governmental double speak, beef exports have actually gone up during BJP rule. Available
figures point to a 16 per cent rise in such meat export in the first six
months. From April to October 2013,the export was worth Rs 13,917 crores while
over the same period in 2014 the figure was
Rs 16,085 crores which makes for a 15 per cent increase. The figure is
expected to be much higher in the period thereafter.

Though Maharashtra and Haryana may
have banned beef but the two states are
among the biggest supplier of cattle to Bangladesh. According to a report
atleast 60,000 cows are smuggled into Bangladesh. They arrive in trucks from
Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Haryana and UP and are sold in ‘special mandis’ in west
Bengal. Ultra-modern abbatoirs have come
up on the Bangladesh side of the border. The beef is then legally exported to
other Asian countries as well as to the Gulf countries. In India beef costs Rs
150 per kg while in Bangladesh it sells at Rs 320 per kg.The price in the
countries of export could be anybody’s guess. Those in power could do well to
remember that the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected!

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R.K. Misra is a field journalist with over forty years of experience working for some of the top news publications in India and abroad. Presently the Roving editor of The Free Press Journal of Mumbai, he is also the State Correspondent of the New York based international news agency, Associated Press (AP), news dailies Hitavada of Nagpur, Daily Post of Chandigarh and Outlook magazine of Delhi , to name a few. Beginning his professional career with The Times of India in Ahmedabad, he has worked as Senior Assistant Editor with Probe India and it’s sister hindi publication ‘Maya’ in Delhi and as Special Correspondent and later Roving Editor of The Pioneer and the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Specialising in cross-country coverage of conflict areas like Punjab and Kashmir at the height of militancy , he has also done stints for the Gulf News of Dubai and the Arab News of Saudi Arabia besides the Tribune of Chandigarh, and Vijay Times of Bangalore. His specialization, however remains, Gujarat. He is presently based in Gandhinagar, the state capital of Gujarat.